


Blitzen

by Ballyharnon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 07:31:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4051576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ballyharnon/pseuds/Ballyharnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some conversations which Remus Lupin had with his mentor, Albus Dumbledore, during his year teaching at Hogwarts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blitzen

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in 2011 as a gift for knitterlywitch, for rs-small-gifts on LiveJournal.

 

  
"Ah, Remus. Do come in. Care for a nip?"  
  
"I have never refused a drink in my life; this hardly seems the time to start."  
  
The old man laughed softly and poured a second brandy. "Come upstairs and tell me how you're settling in."  
  
Remus accepted the cordial glass and followed Albus up the precarious-looking spiral stair. There was a private study housed here, and enveloped in the silent calm of bookshelves, the two men settled into a pair of armchairs.  
  
"I had Xenophilius and Hephzibah's daughter in my final class today," Remus remarked thoughtfully. "She's quite as mad as her parents." From anyone else it might have sounded like an admonishment, but the werewolf's voice was warm with approval--he had always been fond of madness, in its better forms.  
  
The old man nodded, smiled slightly. "You didn't happen to meet the Longbottoms' boy yet?"  
  
"No."  
  
The little smile had become positively a smirk.  
  
"How  _do_  you do that?" Remus asked, amused, and though he meant it to be a lighthearted jest, Albus turned suddenly somber.  
  
"I knew true love," he said, "and it went cold. The experience was quite enlightening. I know a pair of pining hearts when I see them."  
  
There was a stretch of awkward silence. "By that logic it oughtn't to be a mystery to me," Remus sighed, discontent.  
  
"I'm not certain of that." Albus tipped his glass up to finish the warm golden liquor. He allowed some moments for his words to sink in before he spoke again. "Did you bring the letters and things?"  
  
"Ah--yes." Remus produced a little packet from his inside breast pocket. He hadn't kept many mementos from that time, a scant handful of photographs and letters. He had pored over them himself for clues, for explanations, a dozen times. He couldn't imagine that the other man could possibly see anything in them that he hadn't, but he supposed it was worth the embarrassment in case there was anything helpful there. He set them upon the tea table with a sigh.  
  
"Thank you. I'll see that you get them back."  
  
Remus winced inwardly.  
  


...

  
  
Remus found himself tangling his hands in his hair. "He was here? He was inside the castle?" Thunder rumbled; the night had been stormy, and the morning was proving to be the same, another in a string of dark and gloomy days--dementor weather.  
  
"He found his way into Gryffindor tower, with no one the wiser. Young Mister Weasley's bed hangings suffered terribly, but he harmed no one."  
  
"And Harry was in the next bed?" He sagged into one of the seats that faced the headmaster's desk, weary and fatigued from the night's exertions and the morning's gossip. "I don't understand," he insisted. "That isn't a mistake he would make. He would--" Remus stopped himself; of course he couldn't divulge Sirius' preternatural sense of smell or the reason for it. To admit his part in it, when it had been his responsibility to rein in his mad friends, it was too much. "He wouldn't be so careless," he finished lamely.  
  
Albus was regarding him with a curious look. Another flash of lightning lit the gloom outside the window. The thunder came a moment later.  
  
It was thirteen years to the day, to the hour, since he had read of Sirius' arrest in the morning paper.  
  
"It makes no sense," Remus mused. "What could he have been after?" A moment passed before he shook himself and said, regretful, "I'm afraid I haven't the insight into Sirius Black you hoped I would. I suppose I never did."  
  


...

  
  
The great hall was dark, lined with bare evergreens. Albus swirled clear, bright fairy-lights into the trees from the tip of his wand, and Remus sat upon the Gryffindor table, with his feet upon a bench and his chin in his hand, contemplating the bizarre turnings of time.  
  
"The patronus charm is far advanced," he remarked, "but Harry is up to the task."  
  
Albus nodded distractedly and moved to the next tree along the wall. "He must learn it--in times like this, the sooner, the better."  
  
Remus laughed softly to himself. "When I was his age my biggest worry was learning how to laugh off boggarts." He shut his eyes and he could see it, a cold winter night like this one, and Sirius leaning into his shoulder and murmuring a series of silly things for the moon to turn into; Remus had never had to tell him what form the creature would take.  
  
"Blast it with lightning," Sirius had suggested, "and watch it burn."  
  
That sight wasn't funny enough to scare off boggarts, but it had given Remus black satisfaction.  
  
"It amounts to the same thing," the older man said with a hint of a grin, drawing Remus from his reverie. "What colour do you think for the ornaments?"  
  
"Red," Remus replied without hesitation--Sirius' favourite. "Do them all in red."  
  


...

  
  
In the days after Christmas, the light began to return to the world and the heavy snow seemed a crisp, pure blanket. Remus found himself spending more and more time with the headmaster. They often whiled away quiet evenings together by the hearth in Albus' study, and Remus had come to think of the older man more fondly than ever before.  
  
"Did I ever tell you what happened here at Hogwarts during the year that the muggles bombed London?" Albus asked him one evening over brandy.  
  
"No."   
  
"It was Mister Riddle's final year," Albus continued. "We opened the school to muggle-born children from London. I sheltered as many as I could. The great hall and the infirmary were made into dormitories." It had been crowded, and terrifying, and sad. The children were homesick, many too young to board under normal circumstances and unlikely to see their families whole again. "I wanted to help them because they were children, the children of my countrymen," he said, "but more than that I felt it my specific duty to do whatever I might to protect the innocent from Grindelwald and his minions."  
  
Remus regarded him coolly for a long moment. "Why?" he asked at last. "Grindelwald, and the men he used, they were not your responsibility."  
  
"But he was," Albus said, and the tone was not regretful, but wistful. "Think of it, Remus. All those lives, all those muggles, the whole of London without a single child in it. All Gellert's doing. I would have done anything I could to balance it, and I'm ashamed to say it was not for their sake. It was for his sake."  
  
There was a long silence. Remus sighed heavily and stared at a worn place on his cuff.  
  
"Do you understand?" the old man asked him after a time.  
  
"Of course I do."  
  


...

  
  
"Come in, Remus! Care for a cordial cherry?" Albus, his back to the door and his gaze fixed firmly out the window, waved the younger man towards the tray of sweets on the desk.  
  
"Thank you, no." He sat heavily in one of the chairs that faced the desk and wondered what to say.  
  
"He still hasn't tried to contact you?" Albus asked, nonchalant.  
  
Remus shook his head, glum, and then he said, "No." His voice was firm, but rough.  
  
"Hm." The clock ticked, Albus stroked his beard in consideration. Remus took a chocolate after all. "Spring is coming," the old man said after a time. "The castle is all a-flutter with young love."  
  
Remus hummed a noncommittal acknowledgement of this masochistic observation. "You've no idea. The notes I've confiscated this week…" Young wizards and witches, particularly pureblooded ones, were notoriously maudlin about their devotion, and besides all the sickening sentiment they often put the charms that set photographs and illustrations in motion to creative use.  
  
It was difficult to be too shocked, though, when he could well remember being that age himself. Somewhere, folded up into a book, was a purely pornographic little sketch of Sirius, hard, muscles straining, forever his captive--the one souvenir he hadn't surrendered for Albus' examination of their history. Remus had drawn and charmed it with his own hands--just like that damnable map. Sirius had posed gleefully on the big bed in his hired flat, and when the sketch was finished, he had snatched it away and scrawled across a corner in his blocky hand, "Yours forever, S." Then the paper had got crumpled, dropped among the sheets as they kissed, as Sirius moved beneath him…  
  
Remus tried never to open that book and unfold that paper, but he had memorized every line anyhow.  
  
Albus sighed as he turned from the window, apparently lost in his own recollections for a moment. "Gellert and I met in the summer, after I had finished school," he said, "but it felt as though I had known him all my life."  
  
Remus knew the feeling.  
  
The older man approached the desk, popped a chocolate into his mouth and chewed it with a wry smile. "You know, Remus, If I were a good deal younger..." he trailed off.  
  
"It's late," Remus remarked pleasantly as he stood. "I should be going."  
  
"Of course."  
  


...

  
  
"Albus! What's happened?"  
  
"Come in, come in. You're looking well, despite last night's activities."  
  
"Albus!"  
  
The old man smiled kindly. "You needn't worry," he said, voice soft as if there was a danger they might be overheard. "Everything has been seen to. Our mutual friend is on his way to the south Pacific as we speak."  
  
"I must go at once," Remus said in a tone which brooked no argument. He had felt it, in the press of their chests; that electricity was still there, real and aching, and it made explanation completely unnecessary. The rest was obvious the moment Peter's name had marched cheerfully onto the edge of the map. They had only told the story for Harry's benefit. "I must join him," Remus asserted again, a crack in his voice this time.  
  
"Severus shall provide you with an excuse to do so at breakfast." An amused twinkle shone in Albus' blue eyes. "I'm sorry that it is necessary to reveal your secret. You must admit, though, the scandal of a werewolf professor at Hogwarts will quite effectively draw attention from the most recent spotting of the notorious murderer Sirius Black."  
  
Remus, to the old man's shock, laughed aloud, merrily. "That one wasn't the real secret," he said. He stepped closer and pulled Albus into an embrace. When they parted, Remus placed a small, chaste kiss upon the other man's cheek and said, "Thank you."  
  
"Go and pack, my dear boy! I shall arrange a carriage at once!"

 

 


End file.
